


Negotiation

by Transposable_Element



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: AU, Arranged Marriage, Book: A Horse and His Boy AU, Calormen, Elaborate locutions, Insults, Negotiation under threat, Negotiations, Threats, Threats of Violence, flattery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-06
Updated: 2014-11-06
Packaged: 2018-02-24 09:22:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2576333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Transposable_Element/pseuds/Transposable_Element
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ahoshta Tarkaan's wedding night doesn't go at all the way he had hoped.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Negotiation

Ahoshta recoiled when he saw the dagger in Aravis's hand. The girl sat up in the bed, and before Ahoshta knew it she was pressing the tip of the dagger lightly against his throat.

“If you try to touch me, I will kill you,” said his bride. 

“I see,” said Ahoshta nervously, as he began to consider his possible courses of action. The girl appeared to know how to wield a dagger. She was young, strong, and healthy, while he was an old man and had been weak and sickly all his life. He concluded sadly that she could easily best him in any physical contest (in fact, this was something he had been anticipating with pleasure until just a moment ago). He would have to use his wits. He decided to begin with an appeal to her compassion, in the unlikely event that she felt any. And with flattery. He was good at flattery.

“O sweetest and most estimable of brides,” he said, and despite his best efforts a slight whine crept into his voice. “I fear that I have begun badly. Inflamed by your luminous beauty and the altogether intoxicating perfections of your voice and manner, I may have moved too quickly. You are young, a maiden, gently bred, modest: of course you are reticent. Indeed, your reluctance is a mark of your gentility and discretion. In my overwhelming passion, I allowed myself to forget for a moment your youth. I beg you, by the tenderness of your pure and innocent heart, to forgive me this. Of course I will not approach you if you do not wish me to. See? Even now I retreat. But although I am not to touch your body, may I not be given an opportunity to touch your heart? I entreat you not to hold my appearance against me. I know that I am old. I know that I am not pleasing to look upon. But as the poets have said, a man’s worth resides not in his flesh but in his soul. Put away the dagger, O my bride and O the delight of my eyes, so that we may sit and talk, you and I. Perhaps you will begin to see things differently. You are lovely and generous, a rare and precious pearl among women. One day you may find it in your heart to consider the possibility that an old and ugly man is deserving of love and even of the delights of the marital bed.”

"Your soul does not please me any more than your body does, O tedious flatterer,” she said.

“Gentle lady, you cut me to the quick,” Ahoshta replied. But he could see that his bid for sympathy and pity was getting him nowhere. He sighed inwardly. This was not the first time a woman had pulled a dagger on him in bed, but he had not expected it tonight. Clearly Kidrash Tarkaan, with his descriptions of his daughter's sweetness and biddability, had sold him a bill of goods. “I see you have a heart of stone, a distressing defect in one so young, “ he continued. “But, O impetuous maiden, there are other reasons for you to reconsider. Have not the poets said that only a great fool fails to consider all of the possible consequences of an act? If you struck at me, you would surely be condemned and put to death.”

“O repugnant dotard, I know this well. But I would sooner die than endure your foul touch, so, as I am to die in any case, it will give me great satisfaction to send you to hell before me.”

“I might call my bodyguard,” he suggested.

“You would be dead before he opened the door, O vile Vizier. Do you know where your carotid artery is? I do. It is here.” She pricked him with the tip of her dagger. He wondered whether she was a trained assassin. He wondered if this had been Kidrash Tarkaan's game all along.

“You will be relieved to learn, however, that I have a proposed solution to this impasse,” Aravis continued. “If you will swear never to lay a hand—or indeed any other part of yourself—upon me, and never to harm me or cause me to be harmed in any way, then neither of us need die tonight.”

Ahoshta considered this. “O ferocious virgin, must I swear at this very moment?”

“Indeed you must, O most repulsive and deceitful of scoundrels,” Aravis said. “You shall not leave this room alive unless you swear. After all, you might have my dagger taken from me before the next time we met. I am confident that I could kill you with my bare hands, but it would be noisy and inelegant and would take longer than using a dagger. It would probably be more painful for you, as well, although strangely enough that possibility does not trouble me unduly.”

He swallowed. “By which gods would you have me swear, O distressing damsel?”

“All of them.”

“ _All_ of them?”

“ _All_ of the principal deities of _all_ the major pantheons, O habitually dishonest sycophant. I wish to be certain that you swear by at least one god whom you truly follow. Otherwise you might think the oath did not bind you. You would be wrong, of course, and you would be subject for all eternity to the torments reserved for oath-breakers. But that would be of no benefit to _me_.”

Ahoshta cursed under his breath. “I will send you back to your father, O youthful scourge,” he said.

“O unsightly consort, that would suit me very well indeed.”

“Would it? I doubt it would be easy for him to find another match for you after you had been publicly shamed in such a fashion, O despicable and unworthy wife.”

“True. That also would suit me very well. I have no wish to marry.”

“Your father would have to pay me a large penalty,” he said.

“O revolting geezer, he chose to promise me to you against my will and despite my urgent and importunate entreaties. I am exceedingly happy that he should pay for his mistake. It will teach him not to trifle with me in future.”

“I am, of course, disgusted by your shockingly unfilial disloyalty, though not as disgusted as I am by the flagrant dishonesty of your father’s descriptions of your beauty and virtue. I can see why he might be eager to get you off his hands, but to foist you upon me by means of such gross misrepresentation is both unseemly and dishonorable.”

“I await your answer, O hideous wretch,” she said. “Have you decided yet whether you wish to live or to die?”

 

 

Aravis had written up a comprehensive list of deities, and it took more than ten minutes for Ahoshta to swear his oath by each of them in turn. Then, suppressing his fear that she might throw the dagger at him as he retreated, he hurried to the door. But before he could open it, she spoke again.

“Tomorrow, O my husband in name only, we must sit down together after breakfast and discuss whether I will indeed go home to my father, and under what conditions. Or, in the event that you prefer not to void the contract, we must discuss how to arrange this household so that we need never see or speak to each other.” 

“Yes, of course,” he muttered.

After he left, Aravis bolted both the door and the window, hid the dagger where it would be easy to hand, and went to bed.

The man standing guard in the hallway noted that Ahoshta’s visit to his young bride had been brief, and also that he looked more than a little disgruntled as he left. He smiled to himself. Whatever the lady had done to Ahoshta, the guard was certain he deserved it.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> An Alternate Ending
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> “I await your answer, O hideous wretch,” she said. “Have you decided yet whether you wish to live or to die?”
> 
>  
> 
> A few minutes later, Aravis opened the bedroom door. “He would not see reason,” she said to the guard.
> 
> “I am not surprised, Tarkheena,” he said.
> 
> “Is everything in place?”
> 
> “Yes, Tarkheena. An assassin will seem to have crept across the roof, entered the bedroom by the window, and fled by the same route. If you will but go back into the room, I will signal you when it is time for you to scream.”
> 
> “It is fortunate that he has so many enemies to blame for this. But we must be quick. His body begins to cool.”
> 
> “No more than two minutes, Tarkheena.”
> 
> “My father has paid you already?”
> 
> “Yes, Tarkheena. He has paid me well.”
> 
> “After I inherit, I will pay you triple whatever he paid.”
> 
> “Tarkheena, you are truly a pearl among women.”


End file.
